New to this forum and wanted to introduce myself. I'm Steve Schnoebelen, live in Garland and work for GPD. Have been deer and upland bird hunting all my life. I kinda stumbled into duck hunting last year on a little tank on the deer lease. And now I'm an addict. Meet a couple guys on another forum and been hunting with them on public land. And meet a couple guys through a buddy and hunted with them on private land. Enjoy hunting and meeting new hunting buddys. Just really getting into duck hunting. Although it doesn't seem like it with all the money I've spent on it in the past year. So I'm new and hope ya'll don't mind me asking questions.

I hope you got you waders on. The can get a little deep here sometimes, but it's a great place.

Welcome. I work for a PD here in Austin.

Great place to get some advice. I have only been duck hunting a couple years and I'm getting the hang of it.

I'm in the blue gang as well and stay clear of the PD haters in the OT

OT?

Off Topic section.

Welcome aboard. Hope you enjoy the THF as much as the rest of us

Welcome aboard. There are some great guys on here with a lot of knowledge. Former machine gunner, huh? I'm an 0311 for another 4 months.

I hope you enjoyed yourself Saturday! Modrake and myself really enjoyed your company. Its really unfortunate that you had over 300 ducks fall 10' in front your barrell. This starts the addiction process - then comes the hundreds of decoys, boat INVESTMENT, hours on google maps, endless emails to your friends regarding what side of pond to setup on, Dog, who is driving (arguing "its your turn"), arguing wind direction 6 days from the hunt ("National Weather Service is showing Northeast wind but Weather Channel is showing Southeast wind"), and on and on and on....

This past Saturday we took snoball to my fathers property in east Texas. The 30 acre lake was completely frozen from the dam to the shallow. We arrived 20 minutes early predicting the water would be frozen in spots. Im thankful we did! After breaking ice and setting up the mallard machine we finally got settled in for a very questionable hunt. We did not have any idea that the birds would fall out of the sky for a little unfrozen water. We had groups of 30+ teal, 20+ gadwall, smaller groups of greens just fall into the spot. Our spot consisted of 3 decoy and the mallard machine in a 20' opening. This year has been more been extremely difficult to decoy birds. When you have large groups 20' off the frozen water 200 yards out gliding into the spread without flapping wings, your almost paralized in AHHH. Kinda reminds me of goose hunting. After dropping birds on the ice, we broke out the dog. They sat back and watched the show and laughed to no end. When your dog runs full throttle on ice - the brakes have serious issues! Watching the toes grip and shred the ice while he slides 10' past duck was something else. I sat back in nervousness wondering if the ice would give away. We took some cool pics - hopefully download today.

Anyways, we ended up with a 4 man limit in no time.

Welcome!! Badge wearer as well.

can't wait to see some pics of that

Welcome to the forum(pack you waders it can get deep around here somtimes)

Had an absolute blast Jeff. Hopefully we can do it again before the end of the season. Thinking about calling in Wed, and head out to the lake. Interested?

Welcome Steve, Looks like Smash and Dash beat me to the punch. We had fun taking you hunting Saturday and will try to include you on a couple more hunts if we have an opening.
Most of the comments from Smashand Dash were directly related to me on the argueing, weather, and other debates but thats what makes it fun to discuss after the hunt.
I almost forgot Smash and Dash, I think the wind was out of the South East when we left Sunday morning so I guess we were both right. Did not matter though because just about everything decoyed to the hole anyway.
Nice post though.

Thanks Mark. Invite open to you to for the lake Wed morning. And thanks again for inviting me to the party. It was a great time.

Would love to hunt during the week but Monday thru Thursday's I have to take the kids to school.
Thanks though.

Steve, remember I told you this place can get kinda tough sometimes. WIthout pics some on this forum will rip you. I am using dial-up and don't have the time to post pics, spend my time hunting.
Steve and Smash&dash both have photos of our 4 man limit Saturday, If you guys want to post photos, go for it, my computer takes way too long.
Thanks Treebass for letting Steve know right up front what to expect here though, real nice.

Treebass,

DUDE! Did you see the part about later?

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